Aragonese Jesuit and baroque prose writer and philosopher in Castilian language (1601-1658)
Baltasar Gracián y Morales (8 January 1601 – 6 December 1658), most widely known as Baltasar Gracián, was a Spanish Jesuit author regarded as one of the most accomplished prose stylists of the Baroque era.
From: Wikiquote (CC BY-SA 4.0)
From Wikidata (CC0)
Limited Time Offer
Premium members can get their quote collection automatically imported into their Quotewise collections.
Harness the imagination: Sometimes curbing her, sometimes giving her rein, for she is the whole of happiness. She sets to rights even the understanding. She sinks to tyranny, not satisfied with mere faith, but demanding works. Thus she becomes the mistress of life itself. She does so with pleasure or with pain, according to the nonsense presented. She makes people contented or discontented with themselves. By dangling before some nothing but the specter of their eternal suffering, she becomes the scourge of these fools. To others she shows nothing but fortune and romance, while merrily laughing. Of all this she is capable if not held in check by the wisest of wills.
Honorable beginnings should serve to awaken curiosity, not to heighten people's expectations. We are much better off when reality surpasses our expectations, and something turns out better than we thought it would. This rule does not hold true for bad things: when an evil has been exaggerated, its reality makes people applaud. What was feared as ruinous comes to seem tolerable.
Know how to leave things alone, for if knowing how to refuse is one of life's great lessons, an even greater one is knowing how to say no to yourself, to important people, and in business. There are non-essential activities, months of precious time, and it's worse to take an interest in irrelevant things than to do nothing at all.